YMMV / Smite

• Americans Hate Tingle: Despite still having its fans on the Eastern side of the world, Smite is just completely dwarfed by the other MOBA juggernauts League of Legends and Dota 2 over there, which already established its playerbase over there long before it came to the scene (and then also shifted to mobile). As such, there are no Asian language dubs (Japanese or Chinese) for the game and eventually due to its lack of e-sports potential, Hi-Rez removed the SE Asia Server (and somehow Latin American one together) and moved them to the Japanese Server, and it continued to be empty even for casual games, screwing a lot of SE Asians that actually liked the game and forcing them to play with high pings in NA/Europe Server, where it thrived better.
• Broken Aesop: Shiva's speech in his debut trailer that whom you worship does not matter would sound a lot nicer if many of the gods in the game weren't already established as Jerkass Gods, especially the infamously Always Chaotic Evil Elder Gods.
• Broken Base:
  • He Bo's change into "Huh Bwah" has some people enraged that they changed a lore accurate god into something that isn't anything close to the lore while others don't really care about lore accuracy and are just glad he looks polished. The irony? Tencent, a Chinese company, ordered the change. There's no real reason given for the change, but speculation and hearsay points to issue being taken with him being a stereotypically wise old man, or complaining that he didn't look as badass as the other gods, leading to them breaking the stereotype (and making him lore inaccurate as well), making him younger, with an exposed chest and big spiky hand thingies.
  • Some people didn't take Hercules' remodel well, as Herc went from a boisterous Barbarian Hero who is pretty much a Big Fun which was a normal way to portray Herc in many media into...a muscular but armored hero who lost his barbarian features and his beard as well as having a quieter personality. Some like the change anyway, seeing that it will make more sense for a grief-stricken man who killed his family in a fit of madness and his labors are his way of atonement.
    • Another camp usually complains how the new Hercules has a rather disproportionate head when compared to his muscular body (it's too small). Others seems not to care much about the graphical model as long as they still get their Roman bruiser.
    • Eventually, this came full circle as Hercules received an Off-Model Stylistic Suck skin called "Derpules", which shrinks his head even smaller and distorts his voice into a chipmunk trying to sound like a deep badass. Be Careful What You Wish For... As expected, the base show signs of further breaking, those who consider this idea a hilarious poke to the complaining fanbase, or whether it's the worst skin ever.
    • Eventually, for good or bad, classic Hercules returned as a limited skin, being "Retrocules". Most settle for GOOD because the voicework was redone from scratch, by none other than the Hercules actor from his Legendary Journeys: Kevin Sorbo. But this only opened up its own can of worms due to the actor's real life beliefs and drama.
  • Serqet's mechanical tail is met with a bit of ire from the community. One of the streamers, HiRezBart, said they had a chitin tail but discarded it because 'only Americans like the gross stuff'. Cue riot. There's now a broken base over people who prefer the mechanical tail (since Serqet was never depicted as being half scorpion) and people who prefer the chitin tail for character diversity, and are afraid that new gods are going to look too similar to each other, lacking the unique designs the earlier gods once had.
  • Nox's old taunt animation attracted quite a controversy, some think it's a normal taunt which just plays off the Big-Breast Pride for lulz, some think it's completely insulting her regal character design because she 'acts like a slut' when there's already another 'designated slut' (Aphrodite). For the record, in the animation she hunches down, touches her breasts and starts manually jiggling them. It's to the point that in Patch 3.17 she got a new animation.
  • Kawaii Pop Bastet. A fine skin, or Hi-Rez trying too hard to make her look like an anime-style Cat Girl out of the Cat Goddess that it ends up obnoxious? Didn't help with the Westerner's inherent dislike of overly cutesy things, especially 'Anime' things and Smite is pretty small or nonexistent in Japan, the Japanese Pantheon notwithstanding. Then Hi-Rez decided to unleash Kawaii Pop Neith (just titled "Harajuku Neith") and the same backlash happened again.
  • Cupid's Super-Deformed Nonstandard Character Design. One camp thinks that he looks cute, that he fits with more modern portrayals of him, and that the design should be left as it is. The other camp thinks he looks ugly, that it's both lore-inaccurate and clashes too strongly with the rest of the game, and that he needs to be changed. That second camp is then divided on how he should be redesigned: some say he needs to be a young child similar to Ne Zha and Scylla, while others think he needs to be a handsome young man along the lines of League of Legends' Heartseeker Varus◊ (based on the fact that his Greek counterpart, Eros, is usually depicted as such).
  • This question: should Smite be limited to official Gods or are they allowed to include extremely famous or legendary humans, or some that got involved with myth? This has already been going since the beginning, as Arachne was one of the launch Gods of Smite. Then it expanded to the likes of Guan Yu (who to be fair was indeed deified after his death), Hercules, Fenrir, Medusa... then goes further into Cu Chulainn, King Arthur, Mulan and by 2020, they went and added Cthulhu, who, while undeniably a godlike being, caused a broken base by not being from a real ancient religion but rather from a work of 20th Century literary fiction. Either you're going to be okay with these stretched out additions and think it's awesome to see them fight against official Gods... or you think that Hi-Rez has been running out of ideas.
  • You either love Fabulous Chiron skin for his Camp Gay personality or absolutely despise it for the same reason, as well as being the only LGBT representation in the game. This is compounded by the fact that the game doesn't mention other gods' significant LGBT themes and stories ^note Zeus, Apollo, Achilles, Bacchus/Dionysus, Hercules, Loki, Amaterasu, Horus, Set, Baron Samedi.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In Season 1, rarely would you see a duo lane that was composed of any combination that wasn't Rama, Anhur, or Apollo and Geb, Sylvanus and occasionally Athena. Their strengths in different ways made them absurdly powerful in higher levels of competitive play compared to every other ADC and support. This was so significant that the patch that heralded season 2 of Smite's league had changes mostly aimed at making supports and hunters less omnipotent by splitting a lot of item effects so you can only have one or the other; however, the introduction of the Attack Speed buff and Bluestone Pendant (mana-giving starter item) has made Hunters with "High single target damage" dominant (especially Xbalanque and Cupid), while still making previous dominant gods viable.
• Complete Monster: While this game is mostly about the gods or mythological figures from different pantheons fighting against each other, these figures stand out as the most monstrous:
  • Chinese Pantheon: Da Ji, the Nine-Tailed Fox, was sent by the goddess Nu Wa to teach the Emperor of China, Zhou, a lesson. However, she is revealed to be something worse. After she becomes the Emperor's wife, Da Ji causes havoc and misery across China and delights at her own subjects' screams of pain. At one point, she burns a village, tortures several innocent people using her favorite device, Paolao, and makes her men sing at the rhythm of the screams of her victims. When Zhou's people begin a rebellion, which results in Zhou's suicide, Da Ji escapes unharmed and intends to spread misery while joining the battle of the gods to satiate her lust for pain.
  • Hindu Pantheon: Bakasura, the Great Devourer, is a hungry demon who has a bottomless appetite for human flesh. After committing countless unspeakable atrocities, Bakasura then terrorizes a village called Ekachakra by devouring several innocent people of the village, resulting in the chief of the village sending food towards the demon to prevent his hunger. Bakasura responded by eating the person who brought the provisions. Seemingly defeated, he joined the Battle of the Gods to satiate his hunger and using his skill by eating several minions of the gods to restore his vitality during the fight.
  • Mayan Pantheon: Ah Puch, Horrific God of Decay, is the ruler of the underworld Xibalba's Ninth Hell, Mitnal, and has a penchant for collecting corpses to his realm and tormenting them as his playthings with macabre glee. To gain more corpses, Ah Puch roams across the land during the night with his minions and drags the unfortunate innocents into the endless oblivion for his amusement. Participating in the Battle of the Gods, Ah Puch intends to fill all of the Nine Hells of Xibalba with corpses of innocent people and gods and has no hesitations to throw or blow his corpse army during the battle, claiming that he's got a lot of corpses he can use from the underworld below.
• Creepy Cute:
  • Scylla is portrayed as a young girl, until she activates her ultimate and unleashes some giant dog monsters.
    • Charybdis shares a similar design to Scylla, albeit with a large, fish-like monster appearing where one of her arms should be, alongside morphing into a large maw for her third ability.
  • The laugh emote for Ne Zha, Cupid and Scylla has them laughing childishly, which could be viewed as cute or demonic.
  • Izanami is supposed to be a malevolent Goddess out to kill everyone but thanks to a bit of Adaptational Attractiveness that doesn't portray her as a grotesque maggot-ridden ghost, she ends up being this to some, with her yells to make people fear her being considered 'trying too hard'. It doesn't help that in comparison of other Death Gods (especially Hades), Izanami is a bit short...
• Demonic Spider:
  • Cupid. He can stun you, slow you and cripple your dashes proceeded by a very long mesmerize. He also can heal himself and dash away from your attempts to kill him. Win or lose, fighting him will probably irk you. The way he looks compared to the other gods certainly doesn't help his case.
  • Poseidon boasts the same cripple Cupid has but consistently and constantly with his whirlpool which pulls you inward on top of doing heavy damage over time AND making sure your movement skills are disabled. His absurd damage and the fact that he's really hard to catch make him an infuriating opponent.
  • Arachne is a literal spider who had a good run terrorizing unorganized teams. She excels at 1v1s in the early game and jungling without the normally requisite jungle item (allowing her to buy a power item instead). She can pull enemies through walls with her ultimate, which used to be average ranged and hard to hit but was buffed to extreme range and hard to miss.
  • Kumbakharna hits like a wet noodle (if he's built the way he was intended to), but every single one of his attacks has a potent CC effect attached to it. Kumba will rarely ever kill you, but he'll hold you in place for long enough that one or more of his allies will show up to finish you off. Combined with his first ability also doubling as an escape dash and his passive that requires you to hit him six more times after he dies, and you have a very frustrating support to deal with. Kumba is so frustrating to deal with he's considered to be a god-tier support, only behind Bacchus, and is usually first-pick in tournament bans.
  • Ah Puch. His abilities do tons of damage with a large area of effect and some nasty CC effects on top. His ult is even worse, as it's wide enough to cover an entire lane and goes on for a long time, effectively crippling a lot of team strategies. If he uses it underneath a tower, you can already consider that tower lost. Fortunately, Hi-Rez seems to have caught on, and made it so his ultimate will prematurely end if Ah Puch himself is killed. And Ah Puch is no tankier than any other wizard in the game.
  • Baron Samedi's passive makes it so that his abilities have additional effects in addition to them already doing a sizable amount of damage. On top of that, he has an ability that heals him and allies if it hits another god, and another ability that roots enemies in place. His ultimate is the hardest to deal with, as it pulls you in, and even if you beads it, you'll still receive tick damage even if you avoid the big hit at the end. That being said, he has no escape and is still a mage.
  • If you're playing against bots to try out a new mage then running into the above mentioned Au Puch or Baron Samedi can be prohibitive to your learning experience due to the A.I. being able to easily use them. Agni is also very annoying with his peaceable gas cloud that the computer will throw down fast enough that you can't get out of before he activates it with another attack and stuns you, and his ult, combined with computer reflexes, will have him throwing meteors directly where you're standing the second you get close enough, often with another gas cloud thrown in to stun you again.
  • Related to the above, Ne Zha will plague your bot games if you are a mage. Ne Zha himself is not any harder than any other jungler, but they almost neurotically run down the middle rather than jungling forcing the mage to fight two bots in what's supposed to be a single god lane. In addition since he mixes in physical skills and has a combo that stuns you and pulls him close enough to launch his ult, with computer aim to make sure he never misses the first part, he will single-handedly reduce mid-lane to the hardest to the defend of the 3 lanes unless you cheat and have players swap your mage for a tank in midlane^note Such as Jormungandr who's immune to his ult and grapple as well as Baron's and Agni's gimmicks.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Lore Lady is someone whose identity is unknown and her job is to narrate God Reveals (even if there are hilarious issues at times, like when she did Ratatoskr). However, the way she narrates captured the heart of players so much that many wanted an Announcer Pack featuring the Lore Lady. They got their wish at Odyssey 2016 where her Announcer Pack was one of the prizes available. For this, she ends up being Promoted to Playable, being revealed as Nut all along.
  • Nevercake is a freelance animator who creates and narrates some of the extra content and animations Hi-Rez likes to have to fill in their channels. He has done other types of fan-animations, including rival game League of Legends. Then he made a series of animations called "Who is (insert Smite God here)" where he told abridged versions of Gods' lores. Nevercake likes to put puns and some good-natured humor in his videos, and his suave voice also won the heart of fans, leading them to want Hi-Rez to either hire him or make an Announcer Pack for him, just like the Lore Lady. While he was exclusively employed by Riot Studios for a few years, Nevercake is still a freelance animator today, but he still keeps good contact with Hi-Rez and makes other unofficial animations for Smite when there's no Gods to "chronicle". He's so popular with the fans that an announcer pack for him was announced for 2017.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: The sheer amount of non-Smiters who accuse the game as "a copy of League of Legends'" has firmly enforced this complaint as a surefire method to annoy just about any Smiter.
• Fan Nickname: Here are a few:
  • Hercules is, as in many other works of fiction, referred to as Herc.
  • Bakasura is often called Baka (and yes, even in that other way). Some also call his post-rework version to be Barakasura.
  • Xbalanque is often called Xblanc or Xbal by some players, mostly because few know how to spell his name properly in the midst of battle.
  • Pre-rework Ao Kuang was frequently referred to as "Noodle" by the fanbase. The nicknames for his replacement, Kukulkan, "Newdle"/"Nudle" didn't really catch on. Instead, they call him KKK. Alternatively, both him and Jormungandr are going to be called something using the word "Snek" because they're both, well, snakes.
  • Post rework Guan Yu is Guan Nu.
  • Similarly, post rework Nu Wa is Nu Nu Wa or New Wa. This ends up as an Ascended Meme as the Retro skin of hers is officially named "Old Wa".
  • Sun Wukong's eagle transformation, often used for narrowly escaping risky situations, is the Bird of Nope.
  • Reworked Odin's main combo is called the Bird Bomb, due to A) requiring his raven shield and B) doing insane amounts of early game damage.
  • "Goobis" for Anubis... particularly if he's bad at it.
  • "The Joustfather" for a Bacchus played in joust, due to a combinations of normal guardian defences, surprisingly high damage, and the ability to tower dive almost constantly making him viable.
  • Crossing with with Punny Name and inverting it, fans like to elongate Chaac's name further into... Chaac Norris. Similarly to this one, Guan Yu for some reason is referred as Guan Cena.
  • Much like her Ōkami counterpart, there's a lot of people who refer to Amaterasu as simply "Ammy".
  • Instead of Bellona, Bellogna. Like bologna.
  • Susano'o is often jokingly called Susan....much like another MOBA character.
  • Isis is the "Goddess of Demonetization", because YouTube videos will be automatically demonetized for having her name in its title due to it being spelled the same as a commonly-used acronym for an infamous militant terrorist group. In fact this has prompted the developer team to change her in-game name to "Eset", one of the many ways to transliterate her ancient Egyptian name, to prevent this tendency.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Release Guan Yu is Smite's Release Xin Zhao. When he first released he had the durability expected of a tank, more damage than most of the mages, could at least heal you and he could literally reduce his already absurdly low cooldowns to 0 seconds. To top it off most of the current top tiers hadn't been released back then to contest him. To put it in perspective, he was still considered solid after they cut his damage by a third and more than doubled his cooldowns.
  • For the Agni Rework patch, the reworked Gauntlet of Thebes, formerly considered to be one of the worst items in the game, had a simple change to its passive (it now gave +15% of your maximum health). It became one of the most overpowered items in the game and was removed hours after it was introduced.
  • Xbalanque was a terror when he was first released thanks to his passive which gave him increased damage based on how many kills he had. While these days it instead goes up with damage dealt to enemy gods and maxes at six, back before the nerf the stacks were infinite and all it took was a single early-game kill to make Xbal snowball into an unholy force of damage that could 1V5 an entire team without breaking a sweat. Even today Xbal is considered a top pick for ranged ADC due to his absurd damage output and the snowballing he can accomplish with a single overly aggressive push.
• Genius Bonus: For those knowledgeable in Norse mythology, the Assault map has so many features from the story of Ragnarok crammed into a single gamemode. This ranges from the boat, Naglfar seen in the Chaos Fountain to the two demon dogs, Hati and Skoll, devouring the sun and the moon in the sky.
  • The Odysseus' Bow item passively causes every fourth Basic Attack to trigger a Chain Lightning to damage the target hit and up to four nearby enemies. While lightning in any way was certainly not an actual ability of the character's bow, the passive effect still emulates Odysseus using his bow to shoot through twelve hollowed axe heads.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The Funny Bones skin for Baron Samedi has a unique recall animation where he tosses his hat on the ground with the top facing it, then he jumps up and lands into the hat while the hat momentarily expands before the recall is complete. However, if the recall is canceled just before it's finished, Baron Samedi's head will then wear the hilariously-large hat for some time or until he tries recalling without performing the glitch again.
  • The mid-July update of 2022 added the Sphinx's Bauble item, which had the effect of raising the user's CDR cap by 20%. Normally, this would mean players can build their CDR up to 60%, but during the PTS, they found that the devs forgot to take MOTDs into consideration. Quite a few of these special gamemodes set the max CDR set to 80%, Think about what 80 + 20 equals, and you may have an idea on why these gamemodes were disabled when the patch went live.
  • Cliodhna's spooky voicelines that play while she's inside terrain for her passive Phantasmal still occur even while paused during viewing a match in spectator mode, rather bringing The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You to mind. It's rather fitting for a god with an achievement named Jump Scare.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Futbol skin of Xbalanque to celebrate The World Cup 2014, seeing that it's held in Brazil. Looks like fun. Then it turns out Brazil was curb-stomped by Germany by 1-7. Seeing Xbalanque still passing balls like that happily just felt eye-rolling when most Brazilians are weeping for their team's loss at home nation. Looking at it after the Rio 2016 Olympics "rematch", however...
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Back then, the old version of Sun Wukong was considered overpowered, due to his solid movement speed passive, amazing mobility (from his 1st ability) and solid CC. His 3rd ability even managed to bounce back and forth on the same target(s), and overall he had very solid damage due to that in tandem with his other attacks. His passive allowed him to clear parts of the jungle at nearly any speed due to his powerful roaming, allowing him to gank very effectively. Of course, as soon as Wukong's old version was reworked into Hun Batz, he's been in a balanced spot nowadays.
  • Khepri is often considered one of the scariest guardians to confront in the game with his surprisingly good damage output and just how much he can help his team. His passive ability places a little shield around himself and allies, already making himself and his team harder to kill if they make sure to stay close to him. His grab comes quickly, drags someone for a while, and can do extra damage if Khepri has the Mystical Mail which deals damage to everyone near Khepri. His grab also works super well with his stun, which has a great amount of range. The sun he can throw synchs well with both of his previous abilities, can do some good damage, and can further buff Allie’s if they touch it. Finally Khepri's ult allows him to revive an ally with half health whilst bringing them over to him, so unless Khepri is himself surrounded by enemies there is a good chance that person is going to run away and heal up safely.
  • Kumbhakarna is a feared guardian for his insane crowd control, being able to shut down an entire team for more than a second with just his yawn alone if he can get close enough. His club has a big wind up, but makes up for sheer range and surprisingly good damage, both skills combined with a dash makes him incredibly good at both chasing and shutting down chasers. His ult where he knocks someone into the sky is also great for finishing off a low HP target or for kicking a bothersome opponent out of a team fight so you can get their teammates; Hel can’t heal anyone and Khepri can’t grab or revive anyone while 100 feet in the air.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Back in Defense of the Ancients, Zeus has a global ultimate that damages everyone in the enemy team. Now he lost it, and post-rework Nu Wa has it.
  • Hi-Rez managed to get Son Goku's English VA to voice the reworked Sun Wukong. Years later, Riot Games hires Goku's Japanese VA to voice their Wukong.
  • In Defense of the Ancients, there's an item called 'Eye of Skadi', and the name of the hero Ancient Apparition is 'Kaldr'. And now, Skadi herself makes her entrance in Smite, and her wolf's name is Kaldr.
  • You can create a Warriors Orochi team with Guan Yu, Nu Wa, Sun Wukong, Ne Zha, Susano, Da Ji and Achilles; this is true in the Ultimate version where there's a mode that allows for 5 team members total as opposed to 3 to drive the point home.
    • Even regarding Warriors Orochi, it came up with the concept of a cybernetic portrayal of Ne Zha 2 years before Hi-Rez released the Cyberpunk skin for their Ne Zha.
    • And even moreso with Warriors Orochi 4 bringing Zeus, Athena and Ares. But surprisingly, Odin also joins in the fray. Loki as well. And by Ultimate, they're also joined by Terra (Gaia is her Greek name), Hades and Erlang Shen (Yang Jian being his alternative name).
  • Likewise, in Joust, you can make a Fate/stay night team featuring Hercules, Medusa and Cu Chulainn.
  • You can now have a roster filled with Servants from Fate/Grand Order. Aside of the three Fate/Stay night Servants, above, you can add up Artemis, Da Ji^*While not used for this game, it is implied in the myth that Da Ji later fled to Japan and became Tamamo-no-Mae, Arthur, Merlin, Gilgamesh, Tiamat, Cernunnos, Lancelot, Ishtar, Surtr, Kukulkan, Camazotz and Kali. There's 16 so far.
  • You can also reunite the Dota 2 crew with a team of Zeus, Medusa, Sun Wukong and Ares^note Known as his Roman name, Mars, in that game.
  • Likewise, when playing with the Chinese Pantheon, you can have a Honor of Kings reunion with a team of any of these: Erlang Shen^note Listed as Yang Jian, Guan Yu, Mulan, Sun Wukong, Chang'e, Nu Wa, Zhong Kui, Da Ji, Ne Zha, and Hou Yi. In fact, you can fill up one match of exactly 10 Chinese Gods for this whole reunion. (Because that's not getting into non-Chinese characters there, like Arthur and Athena^note And to an extent Angela, because she got bodyjacked by Merlin)
  • Set is voiced by Chris Tergliafera, whereas Poseidon is voiced by Richard Epcar. There are many ways in this game to make them stuck together. Get both hit by that and you can feel like reliving a certain scene in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (both voice actors are involved)
  • Dark Whisperer Ah Muzen Cab, for its time, was quite amusing in its own way for being an off-shoot to Cthulhu. Cut to 2020, Cthulhu himself joined the roster of Smite.
• Jerkass Woobie: Sure, Aphrodite really is feeling horrible about her being 'unworthy' of her husband (Hephaestus/Vulcan, and because he brought it on himself by locking himself in the forge because he couldn't completely let bygones be bygones against Juno/Hera), but the personality she took to cover that up (being a high class girl that can be abusive, like what she did to Denton in her victory/defeat screens) might get a bit too far, and if Cupid's lore is to go by, she's still highly antagonistic against Psyche in spite of that.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Ravana was often seen as the worst God in the game for a while. Overall his abilities were outlcassed by other gods and it was hard to justify picking him. You want a good chaser? Go pick Guan Yu. Want someone with good health drain? Go pick any Hunter or Assassin. His ultimate in particular was quite disliked for essentially being a glorified catch-up tool with little offensive power. He did eventually become the focus of a minor rework in which his passive and his ultimate were changed around to be much more generally useful, along with rather heavy buffs all around. He was later reworked again and his role changed from a Warrior to an Assassin, which further got him more love and these days he is considered a pretty solid character.
  • Nox is appreciated mostly on her lore and MILF design, but her gameplay? It is divisive at best. She can be a terror for new players, but is ultimately a Crutch Character. On release she was extremely weak, her main skill rooted both her and her target, the delay on her burst made it easy to dodge, her silence wasn't nearly as long as it needed to be, and her ultimate was, at the best of times confusing, and at the worst of times completely irrelevant. Even her passive was awful because it required her to be hit, and she's not nearly as tanky a mage as Zhong Kui or Raijin. Even after her rework she remains one of the least played gods in the game because she's just overshadowed by everyone else, being only really good in Arena and Assault.
  • When Xing Tian debuted, he was a really terrifying Guardian, shit-ton of sustain, percentage HP damage, root, mobility and an instantaneous crowd control ultimate that can send numerous players to unwanted position. Realizing this, Hi-Rez then nerfed Xing Tian horribly, exchanging his root with a slow, lowering his nuke damage output, and giving his ultimate more and more windup time that makes it more projected and easier to dodge, to the point of people claiming he's really unplayable. Pretty much the Smite equivalent of getting Olaf'd in League of Legends. Bonus points for also wielding axes. A healthy amount of buffs has fixed this, he is still one of the less played guardians but is now considered Difficult, but Awesome rather than useless.
  • Odin has received a lot of buffs over the years, but is still often seen as a contender for being one of the worst gods in the game. The burst damage of his leap is incredible and infamous, but otherwise his kit is unremarkable. His leap doing so much damage is also a double-edged sword as it is his only method of escaping, so use it at the wrong time and you are done for no matter how much damage you do. His ultimate ability which incases enemies in a cage of spears sounds good on paper, but it does no damage and can’t stop enemies from leaping out of it, so Odin absolutely needs allies to help him kill the enemy.
• Memetic Loser: Tyr is supposedly one of the most courageous Gods in the Norse Pantheon and in-game, it is shown. However, for some reason (or especially his losing animation where he's shown to be scared of Fenrir), during bonus materials, Hi-Rez just likes to portray him as being frightened of things like the prospect of Fenrir biting off his other hand (as shown in the Ragna-Toskr mini machinima), and the King Ar-Tyr splash art? Him being frightened at his own Killer Rabbit prosthetic hand.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Whenever a God Reveal on the Youtube channel is released, you will always hear someone saying something along the lines of "Still waiting for Jesus."
  • The Voice Guided System, similar to voice commands found in, say, Counter-Strike, though they are more expansive and generally more intuitive (they can also change based on your god and skin, if you've bought the voice pack). Players are liable to state the keyboard path to a voice command in conversation - for example, complimenting someone with "VER" (or sarcastically complimenting them), which leads to "You rock!"
    • VER VVX ("You rock!", "Cancel that!") is a particularly infamous abuse of the system for rude purposes.
  • Ymir's emoticon "Hi!" might be normal, until Hi-Rez released a mini-series called 'Smite Machinima' where Ymir does and says absolutely nothing except his "Hi!" once per episode using his actual voice clip while others use voice acting. Fans always thought that Ymir and his "Hi" were the best and most hilarious part in the series, and now attach that greetings to Ymir all day long for hilarity.
  • Mentioning Cerberus and Freya together.^ExplanationIn 2018, someone hacked into Smite's twitter account and posted a sentence quite unsafe for work...
  • Before he was reworked, Guan Yu's Taolu Assault would let out sounds of gongs being hit rapidly. These sounds ended up being called 'Bongos', and Guan Yu has been associated with them, such as "Bongos of Death". Even after the rework wherein he does not produce the sound again, the 'bongos' are sure to be mentioned if someone makes a reference to Guan Yu Game-Breaker release state.
  • Fenrir is known for being stuck in Development Hell before he was finally made playable. However, this Development Hell stuck in the mind of fans that anytime there's a new God announcement, they still refer to "Still waiting for Fenrir" or "New God Fenrir". It lived on so much that Hi-Rez decided to elevate this as an April Fools joke for 2018.
  • A carryover from the Adaptational Displacement from Classical Mythology, Nike is often referred as 'Goddess of Shoes' because of the more popular brand of shoes that shares the same name and is associated with slogans from it like "JUST DO IT".
  • Go anywhere in the Smite community and say that God X needs a buff. One of the suggestions for buffing will be "Give X a gun", guaranteed. ^note This meme came from one of Hi-Rez's official casters, Aggro, that jokingly said Khepri (a giant beetle) should have a gun. It picked steam again with Kuzenbo's god release, which definitely needed buffs but people jokingly said he didn't because he already had "these guns".
  • Kaldr is the real god, Skadi is his pet. Kaldr is a very significant part of Skadi's kit, especially in damage potential, so naturally people joke that Skadi's the sideshow by comparison.
  • He Bo's high-damaging basic abilities lead many to joke he in fact has three ultimates. Some go so far as to say he has four ultimates, since Atlas of the Yellow River practically provides the benefits of two Relics along a line.
  • People either mistake Ne Zha as a girl (not helped that he's actually voiced by a woman), or they joke that he actually is a girl.
  • Let's get down to business...^ExplanationThe song from Mulan is pretty popular to accompany Chinese deities, but this got even more elevated when Mulan herself was announced.
  • Due to the various Gods and playable semi-divine heroes, players tend to latch some memes originating from the Fate Series into said heroes if they were included. Cu Chulainn? Is thought to be wearing blue tight suit and dying a lot ("You bastards!"). King Arthur? Is thought to be a girl in disguise. Merlin? Is either expected to give cocks to whoever he pleases and being broken as hell (Kind of, at least during his launch). Gilgamesh? Many are expecting him to call everyone he comes across "Mongrel".
• Narm:
  • The video for Mountain Man Odin. It tries to show off the new effects and how badass The Allfather is supposed to be, but it is hard to take it seriously due to how Apollo does not give a crap, smiling as Odin throws all he has at him.
  • Charybdis' reveal trailer. It's meant to be threatening, with Charybdis coming out of a whirlpool and killing a bunch of Greek soldiers before Bellona pulls a Big Damn Heroes to protect Phila and the other sailors. However, considering Charybdis' appearance, the execution ends up being "A young girl with a lot of daggers jumps out of a whirlpool". Just try to imagine the survivors describing who killed most of their soldiers with a straight face.
  • The in-game stories provided are this as well, with them often being overly dramatic and trying really hard to be poetic, making them come across as pretentious.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Fighting against a skilled Loki certainly is this. One of his taunts sums him up well:
    "If you can't see me, it's because you are about to die!"
  • Same thing goes if you're low on health and fighting against a team that has Thanatos in it. At any point, he might just consider diving in at you with his ulti, killing you instantly.
  • If the enemy team has a well-played Fenrir, you never know when he might leap from the jungle to dismantle you, or flank you to use his ultimate and drag you back to his allies for an unescapable kill.
  • Like Father, Like Son, Jormungandr brings the same level of paranoia since he trades stealth with burrowing... which cannot be detected at all, and when he reveals himself, he shocks the nearby by thrusting himself upwards, quaking the ground.
• The Scrappy: While most Gods have most of their supporters and detractors, design-wise, some Gods stand out that they have very vocal haters and many would point it out as just plain bad, in both combination of 'irkwise' design and 'lore accuracy gone really wrong'.
  • Cupid is the token 'cute and irritating' character of the game (similar to League's Teemo), where the combination of him being a Demonic Spider to those who face him, he has a very unorthodox design of being a chubby cartoonish toddler (yes, it makes sense about the Roman Cupid, but it's still going to irk many player who wished it was the more adult Eros instead...) and of course, very Cute, but Cacophonic voice. He also has A LOT of skins and extra voices, meaning many ways to grate your ears. It also throws a monkey wrench for people wishing for the addition of Psyche, because her love story fits better if it's with Eros, but Cupid being the toddler version will make that pairing very Squicky or dooms Psyche to be designed as a toddler as well, which is also another can of worms. Hi-Rez showing no intention to remodel Cupid despite other older Gods being remodeled here and there is also a sore point.
  • Jing Wei. Aside of how her gameplay is generally seen as kind of unappealing for an ADC (her ultimate is often considered rather lackluster when it was supposed to be dealing damage), Jing Wei's model is often considered Unintentional Uncanny Valley (especially her model's eyes, they look quite devoid of life) and her personality is designed as a bubbly teenager, that alone could irk a lot of players... but even then, the delivery of her voices could come across as Dull Surprise most of the time, sometimes deriding her as a 'poor man's Neith' (didn't help that her win animation is similar to Neith, a bubbly dance where the dance music overrode the usual victory music). All in all, the stacks are very against Jing Wei and she is overall regarded as one of the worst hunters in the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Server Rollup. Hi-Rez had the idea that in order to ensure low queue time and thus quality matches, the game modes which had overly high queue times at times during low-times should be combined into other crowded servers, forgetting that it would result those from other regions will have super high pings that makes the game unplayable for the non-locals. This limits the player's game modes severely and eventually, as of Patch 4.19, it was removed altogether now that they already made an alternative with 'Multi-Queue' (basically queueing in multiple game modes at once).
• Squick: Cupid's lore is about his tale with Psyche, but Cupid here is depicted as a toddler. A toddler with a wife!? Err...
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some of the remodels of less humanoid gods. To whit, Nu Wa had her snake form de-emphasized, Bakasura was made more humanoid in shape, and Ao Kuang is only a dragon when he uses his ultimate. The fact that his was (allegedly) to please Asian players has just frustrated English speaking players even more.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Or interaction, considering how less-story driven this genre is. You'd think that Medusa has something to say about Arachne, being fellow unfortunate women that got turned into monstrosities because of Athena. But no, Medusa has nothing to say about Arachne. Likewise, Skadi did not interact with Freya, her daughter.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Smite usually limits themselves between deities overall. Therefore, it really surprised the playerbase when they revealed that the 99th and 100th "Gods" turn out to be King Arthur and Merlin the Wizard, both of them mythological characters/heroes that have no speck of godly essences unlike the likes of Cu Chulainn or Hercules. And eventually topped further in the next year... with Cthulhu.
  • Regarding the Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover skins, pretty much nobody expected Momo to get his own skin, especially with more prominent characters like Toph and Katara having yet to appear.
  • While he is a franchise regular, Slash wasn't on most people's radar to be featured as a skin. Many assumed that, after the Turtles, Splinter, Shredder, and Krang, the next TMNT skin would've been of a more prominent character in the franchise, such as Casey Jones or Karai.
  • The end of 2022 throws a monkey wrench on the datamining expectation. It was formerly speculated that the last deity for 2022 would be Maman Brigitte of the Voodoo pantheon based on the hints on the previews. However, she never got released, and the next deity after Maui turns out to be... that Fire Giant you fought many times for buffs, Surtr.
  • You want a full collab that was unexpected, even by Smite standards? How about one with VShojo, a Virtual Youtuber group?
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Many players assume Ne Zha is a girl upon first appearance. Some still have trouble believing he isn't even after reading about him! As a 7 year old boy he has a very high-pitched voice. He wears a lot of pink, which as a shade of red was seen as a manly color even 100 years ago, but is now a girly one. He incorporates a lot of flowers into his imagery, which is universally symbolic in Chinese culture but girly in the West. Finally he has his (long) hair done up in pigtails which was how boys wore their hair at the time, but even people familiar with Chinese culture tend to think of the queue as being the predominant Chinese hairstyle whereas it was only worn by men, not boys, and is actually a Manchu hairstyle introduced (forced upon) the Han Chinese when the Qing dynasty conquered China in 1644 AD; Ne Zha fought to overthrow the Zhou dynasty and would've been born circa 263 BC. Lampshaded by Hel in her directed taunt to Ne Zha.
  Light side: Take that, little girl!
  Dark side: That is a boy you idiot!
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Izanami can look like this. She's malevolent, callous, evil. But most of them can be traced from a justified anger of her own husband, who promised her to get her out of the underworld and swearing to not to leave without her... immediately betraying that promise the moment that he saw that she's now ugly and rotting, then for good measure, rolled a boulder just to seal her inside. No wonder she's so pissy.
• Woolseyism: The Brazilian translation\dubbing does its best to translate the jokes, or downright create ones for the local populace (Heavy Metal Thor's^note which in a big case of this, becomes "Detonathor", voiced by Detonator, the singer of local parody metal group Massacration taunt to Athena is "This is not Saint Seiya!"), and it's even better with the two skins regarding the local culture, Carnaval Queen Neith (she sings samba and axé, does Carnaval references, and sibilates in all the "S" like a woman from Rio) and Cangaceiro Namana (as Northeastern as it gets). Even if in 2018 the voice pack stopped being available for download, Brazilian gamers always advice for installing patches and such to keep the game in Portuguese.